social networks

I finally got around to setting up a myspace account yesterday. I had heard about friendster and xanga and had set up profiles with orkut (taken over by Brazilians, and some Iranians), hi5 (lots of porn solicitation), and facebook (my school not represented), but didn't really get much out of it, so I was reluctant to mess with yet another social networking site. I think I might actually get some use out of this one because there are lots of people there that I actually know in the real world and there is a critical mass of users across a relatively broad range of social groups (although not very many over age 30). This critical mass idea is eloquently elaborated in The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell identifies "connectors", "mavens", and "salesmen" as serving unique roles in social networks. It would be cool if there was a feature that let you look at your myspace network topology. A great book on network topology is Linked by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. This book introduced me to the work of Mark Granovetter and the "strength of weak ties" as well as elaborated on the science of "six degrees of Kevin Bacon". Incidentally, some of my coworkers were playing this today and said they heard Osama bin Laden could be linked to Kevin Bacon perhaps via earlier interviews with western journalists. If anyone can confirm this I'd love to hear about it!